


the aftermath of a funeral

by hoverbun



Series: what happens after death [6]
Category: League of Legends
Genre: Body Horror, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 14:54:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14263494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoverbun/pseuds/hoverbun
Summary: This is what it's like to rot after you die. This is what it's like to die by a curse.





	the aftermath of a funeral

**Author's Note:**

> there’s a very small reference to suicide/suicidal acts near the end, but no action is taken and it’s through the narration only.

He begins to die a second time.

* * *

In years time, when his flayed lungs and ache in every bone have long since faded, and the wasted muscle wrapped around his bones is just sinew and wasted flesh, he will forget what it was like. For he will always consider the plunge into the cold ocean with a prayer in his mouth as the moment when he shed his mortal coil and freed his soul into the maw of the undead - but the days that followed were what took his body.

He met the Shepherd. He turned him away from the monastery, no matter how many times he returned to waste away on the steps. 

It was on the fifth day that he continued to search the stretch of islands, beyond the shore that met the monastery’s dying front. Karthus’ heels ached with every step, the bones inside of his almost-worn boots trying to rip through his skin.

His voice felt stripped. When he exhaled, it came through a hole in his throat.

Karthus finds an empty church. He does not leave the church for some time.

* * *

Spirits eventually gather. They brush too close to his body when he lays on beds older than the empire he came from, looking to get under his skin.

He realizes he does not need to sleep, for exhaustion ceased to cast its weary shadow over him after what he could only presume to be when the day crawled to the next through the endless cycle of night. But it feels like a routine that he needs - even if he doesn’t particularly want it. It will be one of the many things he sheds upon the islands. He already has forgotten what day it is.

Karthus lays upon a mattress stuffed with feathers and wool so old that it felt like nothing better than straw. The spirits get closer, and he can see eyes where there are none, looking closer into who he is, like they’re looking for the blood inside of him that doesn’t beat anymore. His body is dead, his mind is not - in the land of the undead, that is common. 

But he hasn’t lost his body just yet.

Is it punishment? No. No punishment, only natural progression. Decay. Loss.

He doesn’t need to sleep. He’s not tired. He can’t lift his head. The memory of whoever he was dries his lips, forcing him to breathe in its dry and cold air. When he smiles in the hum of curious spirits, he breaks the skin.

* * *

Walking hurts so much.

Karthus holds himself against the wall of a building that could have been a house, could have been a library, could have been something more before time got to it. There is water in his boots, wearing through the soles and numbing his feet. Every step cuts. Every step bleeds.

A hand drags against the wall. The magic waxes, wanes, like a moon behind clouds. He hasn’t been able to lift himself into the air since his ascension.

He tries to take a step. The bones are ripping through his skin. Karthus lifts his head, and with it one leg, and tries to step up into nothing, summoning all of his dizzied focus. Like ascending a single step, he leaps into the air, and then drops back down to the ground, sloshing damp grass and jolting horrific, numbing pain up his calves.

He doesn’t scream. But he almost does.

The worn, torn, pulled leather comes apart with just a couple of tugs. He’s bleeding, but he can’t feel it while walking through cold water from past rain. His skin is growing black. There will be nothing left soon.

* * *

Fire, as it naturally should, catches and burns in a hearth within the church. But it is only light, and does not warm his skin, no matter how close he sways his hands to the flames.

His robes have long since lost the deep navy colours they once had, before the islands, before even the cove of Bilgewater, however long ago it was. They rest, damp against his legs, wearing away near their hems. He does not think he could stitch them, for he cannot feel anything through his finger tips. Death and an icy curse alike blacken his fingers, swelling them around his bones.

Maybe fire doesn’t actually work on the Shadow Isles. Maybe the spirits run through the flames, playing in the light, and steal away the heat. Or perhaps he just cannot feel anything anymore, running through water and dust on books and more water and there is so much water on the islands, not just around them, in grass and buildings and rivers, in the dead and in the mud. It is dirty and runs with ashes, grass, dirt.

Karthus manages to focus on his hands. He closes them, and presses his broken nails into his palms.

They look different. Longer. Still black, but deforming. Maybe it’s the death settling in.

He wishes he could die faster.

* * *

It had been three days since he walked across any surface. Dragging himself to the hearth had begun to hurt his hips, which snap and pop in ways that reminded Karthus of older men in the almshouse. Elders that had managed to outlive the young. He doesn’t want to think about them anymore.

Each step breaks his focus that he has to force himself into keeping, his feet having bled themselves to black like his hands - thin, fragile. The last of his strength for the day allowed him to pull a chair from behind an abandoned study desk. There is a plan.

Karthus sat in it for an hour before he could rise once more. The book open in his lap is moved to the floor, and as best he can, he lifts himself on top of the chair. His legs aren’t steady.

Even without much weight to him anymore, the old wood does not agree with his decision. But he balances himself, hands at his side, and glances to the book, the incantation written centuries ago by priests who could not have predicted the fall of the islands. Karthus thinks about the services and the magic and the prayer, as he takes a step off the chair, bracing himself for the impact against stone and the darkness to follow.

Pain does not come. He looks down his withered body, and he is hovering. Weak legs hang uselessly in the air, like horrific sights behind the doors of the desperate. There is no pressure on any part of his body to keep himself above the floor - no pull on his shoulders, no seat for his rear, no invisible collar for his throat. Like plunging into deep water, Karthus levitates, feeling the peace below his hips.

He has the strength to smile. His jaw has begun to hurt in these several days. Death sweeps itself up his body, leaving gaunt eyes and thinning skin, but at last, he feels its peace. He sighs the last of the incantation, and the chorus of several souls drag from his lungs.


End file.
